The WSJ has published one of the most slanted pieces of anti-2A journalism I've seen in years; an attack on Stand Your Ground laws entitled "Six Words Every Killer Should Know: ‘I Feared for My Life, Officer’.
The piece is predicated on the idea that Stand Your Ground laws aren't just leading to more justifiable homicides in recent years, but that the vast majority of those justifiable homicides weren't really justified at all, but instead were legally sanctioned murders.
It’s easier than ever to kill someone in America and get away with it.
In 30 states, it often requires only a claim you killed while protecting yourself or others.
While Americans have long been free to use deadly force to defend themselves at home, so-called stand-your-ground laws in those 30 states extend legal protections to public places and make it difficult for prosecutors to file homicide charges against anyone who says they killed in self-defense.
The number of legally sanctioned homicides by civilians in the 30 stand-your-ground states has risen substantially in recent years, The Wall Street Journal found in an analysis of data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Justifiable homicides by civilians increased 59% from 2019 through 2024 in a large sample of cities and counties in those states, the Journal found, compared with a 16% rise in total homicides for the same locales.
A 59% increase sounds like a lot, but we're essentially talking about justifiable homicides making up about (in the WSJ's estimation) 2.8% of all homicides in Stand Your Ground states in 2019 to 3.8% in 2024. According to the WSJ, justifiable homicides in non-Stand Your Ground states have slightly increased during that same time period as well, but remain right around 2% of all homicides.
Oddly, though the WSJ noted a 16% rise in total homicides in SYG states between 2019 and 2024, they never get around to stating what happened to the homicide rates in states without Stand Your Ground laws. Did they increase as well, and if so, was it at roughly the same rate as SYG states or even higher?
Before we get any futher, we should note that the WSJ is only defining states that explicitly have Stand Your Ground enshrined in statute, but a number of other states have recognized the same right to stand your ground through common law.
Notwithstanding the sensationalist framing, there's some interesting data in here about the rise in justifiable homicides over the last few years. But like so many of these types of stories, it only focuses on states with statutory "stand your ground" provisions and basically… https://t.co/z1Dl5psTpg pic.twitter.com/tKcLeHVITi
— Jake Fogleman (@Jake_Fogleman) October 29, 2025
According to Justia.com, California, Colorado, Illinois, New Mexico, Oregon, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington all have judicial stand your ground rules.
The only states that impose a strict duty to retreat are Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, and Rhode Island. Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are slightly more complicated; the Keystone State has a statutory Stand Your Ground law, but it only applies in incidents where the aggressor is using a lethal weapon, and while there is generally no duty to retreat in Wisconsin juries can still consider "whether the defendant had the opportunity to retreat with safety, whether this retreat was feasible, and whether the defendant knew of the opportunity to retreat in determining whether the defendant reasonably believed that the amount of force used was necessary."
So, Stand Your Ground laws are even more commonplace than the WSJ suggests, which also skews the data on justifiable homicides in SYG states.
Beyond that, though, the WSJ makes it seem like the only reason why justifiable homicides have increased in Stand Your Ground states is that people are literally getting away with murder, without spending much time at all considering whether the law is allowing more people to legitimately act in self-defense.
None of their anecdotal Stand Your Ground cases comes across as a blatant injustice. The case that's perhaps the closest call involved a 78-year-old Floridian who shot and killed a neighbor's adult son who had trespassed into his backyard with a chainsaw and repeatedly refused to leave after being told to do so. The 42-year-old holding the chainsaw was shot once in the chest as he approached the homeowner, who told police that he was afraid that his life was in danger.
In that case, police actually arrested the man and prosecutors charged him with second-degree murder, but a judge dismissed the charges after concluding the armed citizen believed “such force was reasonably necessary to defend himself from [the] imminent use of unlawful force.”
The word "reasonable" is appropriate here. Despite the WSJ's insinuation that all it takes to absolve yourself of criminal charges is to tell police, "I feared for my life, officer," if police, prosecutors, judges, and juries don't believe that your fear was reasonable under the circumstances then you'll most likely be spending much of your life behind bars. As my friend Ed Morrissey writes at HotAir:
The Uncle Jimbo Defense is simply absurd. "Stand your ground" laws only eliminate the requirement to flee from a threat before taking action; it does not negate the "reasonable" standard on a threat of death or grave bodily harm, nor does it give a pass to someone who participated in a conflict. In most if not all jurisdictions, you cannot claim self-defense in a fight you start or in which you substantially participate, regardless of "stand your ground" laws. And prosecutors will charge and imprison those who act outside the very tight confines of legal lethal self-defense, no matter what incantation they mutter when police arrive on the scene.
Unfortunately, this is the kind of cherry-picking, data manipulation, and flat-out nonsense we've come to expect from the Protection Racket Media, especially on Second Amendment and self-defense issues. It's beyond disappointing to see it at the Wall Street Journal.
It is indeed disappointing, and I can't help but wonder what, if any, gun control outfit dangled this story in front of reporters Mark Maremont and Paul Overberg in the hopes that they'd run with data provided to them. I could be wrong and this could be a piece that came about without any help at all from gun control activists, but either way the pair have provided WSJ readers with a skewed and slanted perspective on Stand Your Ground laws and, more generally, the right of self defense.
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